The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have launched a new program meant to give providers more access to claims data as an effort to drive better clinician practices.
The pilot – dubbed Data at the Point of Care (DPC) – is part of the agency’s MyHealthEData initiative which is meant to enable the free flow of patient data. It builds on the organization’s launch of Blue Button 2.0 last year, which created the technical ability for beneficiaries to securely link their Medicare data to apps and tools created by developers.
DPC would essentially use the standardized FHIR-based API to link claims data into a physician’s workflow, allowing providers to get a more holistic and complete picture into an individual’s health status.
Participants will have the ability to request a Medicare beneficiary claims data from CMS to better understand their medical history and previous treatment patterns from other providers. That additional insight could lead to fewer unnecessary testing and procedures, more informed clinician decision making and ultimately lower downstream costs.
CMS touts the new program as helping to unlock the silos that exist between clinical data locked in EHRs and other healthcare systems, allowing for a much more useful and extensive health record.
The organization is looking for volunteers for the program which is slated to begin its roll out later in the fall.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Alongside the announcement about the DPC program, a group of 20 technology companies, healthcare providers and health plans including Apple, Amazon, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Anthem have agreed on building the infrastructure and standards necessary to make medical claims data easier for patients to access in an effort called the CARIN Blue Button data model.
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